


Unattainable Hijikata-san

by velvetcat09



Category: Gintama
Genre: Emotionally constipated Gintoki, M/M, Post-Canon, pining gintoki, to be honest it's both of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:01:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28092825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/velvetcat09/pseuds/velvetcat09
Summary: Hijikata, I really love you.====Post-canon setting. The Gintoki after two years later who came back to Edo.
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Comments: 6
Kudos: 117





	Unattainable Hijikata-san

**Author's Note:**

> a little something about pining & yearning gintoki  
> the main idea is just gin-san that wants to hold hijikata's hand
> 
> \----
> 
> title is reference to Takane no Hanako-san by Back Number  
> it translates to 'Miss Flower on a High Peak'- a saying which describes something that is out of reach

It’s been a while. Everything constitutes as ‘a while’ when you’ve left your loved ones behind for over two years with no contact whatsoever. Two years is both a short and long time to have entire townsfolk move on from a mere individual existence. Gintoki won’t blame anyone if they forgot about him or the Yorozuya Gin-chan now. There are kids born two years ago that are now wobbling around Edo, asking their parents what lies beyond the skies above.

But Shinpachi kept the business running. Gintoki had thought, well done him for leaving behind a legacy for the youngins. The Yorozuya soul lives on and that’s more than enough for Sakata Gintoki.

So, it’s been a while. How is it? How is everyone doing? After the terminal is destroyed yet again, Edo is rebuilding, _yet again_. Gintoki is doing well. He returns to his old habits because analogs like him die hard, he guesses. If anything, it feels like returning to episode one. Kagura isn’t living in his closet again. Shinpachi decides to focus on his father’s dojo, properly splitting the work with Otae this time. Gintoki returns to being a single-man-band sort of business.

Everything is where it was left.

And yet, ever the slightest, everything is shifted.

Having abstained from pachinko and drinking for those years on the road, Gintoki doesn’t feel right walking to those places.

Hasegawa is still Hasegawa who loiters on the street, but Gintoki knows that the homeless man is working on his life, this time for actual _actual_. He did rose to popularity by using Gintoki’s character after all, despite how fleeting it was. So now, scraping from whatever he has left, Hasegawa tries.

Without his partner-in-crime, pachinko and drinking aren’t just the same.

But Gintoki is not limited to one drinking friend, he has lots of drinking buddies to choose from. He’s famous across the galaxy, one person will definitely accompany him to a bar. Despite it all, two years of solitude also already seeps into his bones. Or rather, it resets him to someone who wanders alone, a background character who you can’t ignore, yet gives the unapproachable air. Two years was enough for him to rebuild his walls.

There’s no cement gluing the bricks together, it’s just blocks that are stacked precariously on top of each other without care, somehow it forms a structure, from afar it looks rigid. However, even a gentle blow of wind could topple it.

Gintoki knows the person who taps his shoulder before he even turns his head to face him. Little things that remain unchanged, one thing will always give away Hijikata’s presence.

“Yo.” Hijikata stubs his cigarette on the ashtray near Gintoki.

The hand on his shoulder remains in place and Gintoki reaches for it with his own, laying his palm atop of it. They linger enough for it to be casual friendliness, then Gintoki makes them linger more for something else. He pulls the hand just a little so that Hijikata will fall closer, so that their lips could meet. Hijikata falls voluntarily before halting just mere inches apart.

Gintoki doesn’t know what sort of look he has on his own face right now, probably detachment—he barely feels the muscle moving, but he feels his own small smile from seconds ago faltering.

“Not now,” Hijikata looks directly at Gintoki. “Kondou-san—”

Like a vassal announcing the Lord’s arrival, Kondou enters the small izakaya in his usual boisterousness. Hijikata peels himself completely off Gintoki and the silver permhead lets go without so much of a fight.

‘Not now’ doesn’t always mean ‘later’.

Two years ago, Gintoki didn’t care of that distinction. He stole time from the Demonic Vice-commander all the same, so he didn’t mull over something trivial like that.

The Gintoki two years later, however, learned of valuable lessons. Among them is that selfishness can only go so far.

The three of them laugh and chat over the everydayness of living in Edo, with Kondou leading the volume of the conversation. Hijikata offers his usual role as the voice of reason, while Gintoki fills the gap in between. The silver haired man compensates for whatever he was feeling earlier by following Kondou’s idiocy, loosening himself with warm sake. Their laughter blends into the night without a strain, Gintoki is an expert liar.

It’s a lively evening, it’s been a while since he last drinks with another person, let alone with these two.

It’s been a while since he’s with Hijikata alone.

* * *

It’s not jealousy, it’s envy.

Gintoki realizes this after years of observation. What’s spreading its tendrils, filling the gaps in his chest cavity, isn’t about not liking things that isn’t his. As someone who begins with nothing, envy is what it truly is. He’s envious of those who could afford eating at fancy restaurant when he barely has money to go for the oden stand. He’s envious of those who could eat sweets to their heart’s content without having to worry of their blood sugar level. He’s envious over those who could display their affection towards their partner publicly.

He’s dating Hijikata. They’ve been dating before two years ago, before three years ago, before Gintoki thinks too much about it.

They play around, neither of them ever speaks of it, but they’re exclusive towards each other, as far as Gintoki knows. He has no one else in mind, he guesses Hijikata is more or less the same. With how long they’ve known each other, how close they always end up; surely it entails an affectionate gesture in broad daylight, one or two. But neither men is of those who openly displays such a thing. Hijikata is rather reclusive, and Gintoki doesn’t care enough over trifling things.

It takes nearly five years for Gintoki to realize that he wants to hold Hijikata’s hand.

To have everyone know, without a strand of a doubt, that they’re more than just what the headlines already say about the relationship between the Yorozuya and Shinsengumi. Because by now, everyone knows of their inseparableness. Edo has two guard dogs, and whichever isn’t currently there to protect her, the other will be there.

There are rumors and teasings from people who know the two of them during the early stage of their relationship. Those who notices their closeness, those who takes joy in giving their Vice-Commander a headache everyday with banal questions like “How big is Danna’s you know?”.

Like everything else in the world when you adjust it with time, it dies down eventually. Things become more complicated, plotlines become more serious, it leaves no room for casual sex and meetups. The Shinsengumi had to leave Edo. The Yorozuya left for Rakuyo. Everything converged into a single point in the universe and collapsed.

Gintoki didn’t spare any sort of farewell before he departed. In his defense, his mind was too muddied at that time. Too preoccupied with the past that he didn’t think much about the person who chased him all the way to the burned down wreckage of a building from decades ago. He didn’t consider Hijikata’s feeling, in the grand scheme of things. Without so much of a word, leaving behind no contact or footsteps to trace. Hijikata did it all on his own. It’s only reasonable that there will be a gap after that much time has passed.

The short distance of twenty-five centimeters between where Gintoki and Hijikata walk, side-by-side. The thirty minutes delay in every meetings. The six seconds window of opportunity to hold Hijikata’s hand that he always missed from thinking fourty minutes too long. The one second spent too long for Hijikata to switch his frown into annoyed glare. Gintoki counts the days that passed with him not seeing a single strand of that Mayora’s hair.

* * *

“Hijikata,”

Gunmetal blue looks up from the ramen he’s eating. Gintoki only ever stares at his own broth.

“What?”

Gintoki doesn’t know where to put his feelings and words.

“… are you..”

 _seeing someone else? Embarrassed to be with me? Angry at me?_

“..having fun?”

There’s a pause before Hijikata huffs an incredulous laugh and answers him.

“What are you even talking about.”

* * *

Gintoki doesn’t drown in booze nor waste his money on mindless gambling anymore. What he does is he sits at the park at 2 in the morning, eyes kept low on the ground. Two years, he sorely misses the silent solitude from the vast mountain forest and this park is a poor imitation of nature, yet one nonetheless.

There’s no threat of boars in the middle of the night, but the loud snore coming from the people living in cardboard boxes next to the public toilet is similar enough. No stars, but the dim streetlight gives the illusion of light above your head anyway. At nights like this, the air is crisp just like in the woodlands.

“What are you doing here?”

Gintoki looks up.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Hijikata answers by stubbing his cigarette with his shoe. Gintoki casts his eyes back on the ground to gaze at that cigarette’s demise. “Aren’t cops supposed to be setting up example for the citizens?”

“Gintoki.”

_What exactly is he dodging here?_

“Did you… —Are you really even _home_?”

He doesn’t look up; he doesn’t want to see Hijikata’s face, nor does he want Hijikata to see his. Whichever is more painful to look, he doesn’t want to know.

Gintoki has been sober for two years and he has forgotten how to get drunk when he needed it the most.

“… Isn’t that my line?” Gintoki only sees the sole of Hijikata’s shoes. “Your home—”

_Is not with me. It’s with your Shinsengumi. Everyone, everything—returns to where they belong. Your home—isn’t pitying this pathetic person._

“It’s empty, isn’t it?”

Gintoki looks up, frowning.

“The Yorozuya, it’s empty without the kids, isn’t it?”

“What..— “

“I’ll live with you.”

Gintoki wavers.

“W-what do you mean.. “

“I spent two years looking for you, did you think it was for nothing?” Gintoki notes the way hijikata’s brows knit in such a way that twists his own lungs and makes it hard to breathe.

He didn’t. He never thought it as merely returning him to the Yorozuya. He never once thought Hijikata was only doing it out of some old debt. Ever since he realized how thoughtless he had been when he left Hijikata, Gintoki couldn’t dismiss the other’s feeling anymore than he already did.

That’s why it comes surging like a broken dam.

Out of anyone in this world, the billions of beings across the universe, Hijikata chooses to love him, instead. Two years of Gintoki shedding his pride, he returns to emptiness. That corpse-eating demon child he found again during his years of journey; it stays with him now. Something that Gintoki has forgotten, he remembers now.

And this undeserving demon wishes for nothing but that love to be true.

Gintoki realizes, understands, from a long time ago; that he can’t live up to Okita Mitsuba. For the longest time, having something casual and impermanent was enough for him. A small place in Hijikata’s heart, however small it is; it was more than enough.

He knows he’s greedy, in a way, in a sense. He wants more—he doesn’t deserve it, truly.

Gintoki lets out a pitiful laugh. He looks at Hijikata’s hand and reaches for it, a little eased when Hijikata isn’t shying or swatting away like usual (“Someone’s looking.” “Not in public, permhead.” “Not now.”).

“Hijikata,” His thumb caresses the ridges of the other’s knuckles.

_You shouldn’t have stooped so low for someone like me._

“you really have terrible taste, you know.”

Gintoki feels like crying when Hijikata squeezes their clasping hand.

“And whose fault is that?”

Hijikata sounds hoarse.

* * *

Gintoki hesitates in initiating it. Two years had made him rather dull; he seems to have lost his knack when it comes to this. Wants, but failing to express that desire. Gintoki returns to a child with envious gaze.

Then Hijikata takes his hand instead, and Gintoki learns to hesitate less.

**Author's Note:**

> companion piece => [Solitary Gintoki-san](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28836069)


End file.
